Of Wolves and Men

by Barry Lopez

  Much additional information is in the many indexed volumes of the University of Oklahoma’s Civilization of the American Indian series.

  For general background on the dog in Indian cultures see G Wilson, “The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture” (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 15: 125–262, 1924); G. Allen, “Dogs of the American Aborigines” (Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College 63 (9): 431–517, March 1920); and W. D. Matthew, “The Phylogeny of Dogs” (Journal of Mammalogy 11 (2): 117–38, 1930). The Crow story of the wolf and the dog is from R. H. Lowie, “Myths and Traditions of the Crow” (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 25: 224–25, 1918).

  The story of the Sleeping Wolf fight is recounted in George Hyde, The Life of George Bent (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968). For information on Navajo werewolves see W. Morgan, “Human Wolves Among the Navajo” (Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 1 1, 1936) and “Southwest Witchcraft” (El Palacio, The Quarterly Journal of the Museum of New Mexico 80 (2), 1974).

  The story of Laugher is adapted from James Willard Schultz’s manuscript in the special collections library at Montana State University. Different versions of the story of Woman Who Lives with Wolves appear in Hassrick’s The Sioux, and elsewhere. The Pawnee origin story is from Weltfish.

  For the Makah Wolf Ceremony, see Alice Ernst, The Wolf Ritual of the Northwest Coast (Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon Press, 1952). The Captive Girl Ceremony is, again, from Weltfish. The Sunrise Wolf Bundle Ceremony can be found in full in Alfred Bowers, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization (Wash., D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 194, 1965).

  Many of these works contain helpful bibliographies.

  III: The Beast of Waste and Desolation

  For the general development of ideas in chapter 7, I relied in part on John Rodman, “The Dolphin Papers” (North American Review 259 (1): 13–26, 1974). Roderick Nash’s ideas are in his Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Both the Rodman article and Nash’s book are heavily footnoted and mention is made of most major works, classical and modern, bearing on the themes of hatred of the beast and fear of wilderness.

  Records of animal trials and a general discussion of related philosophical issues are in E. Evans, “Bugs and Beasts Before the Law” (Atlantic Monthly 54: 235–46, August 1884). Pertinent points in Descartes’s arguments are in his fifth discourse in Discourse on Method (N.Y.: Penguin, 1968).

  An account of Courtaud, highly embellished, is in E. T. Seton, Great Historic Animals, Mainly About Wolves (N.Y.: Scribners, 1937). A work on human wolf predation with some apparent basis in fact is John Pollard, Wolves and Werewolves (London: R. Hale, 1964).

  The problems wolves face in trying to survive in captivity are reported regularly in Zoological Record. For a personal treatment see Lois Crisler, Captive Wild (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1968).

  Information on wolf hunting with dogs in Russia and America comes largely from popular magazines of the period, including various issues of Scribner’s Magazine, Outdoor Life, and English Illustrated Magazine. In general, outdoor magazines of the period covered (roughly 1850 to the present) are an excellent guide to attitudinal changes concerning the wolf. Especially useful, and mentioned in the text, are copies of The Alaska Sportsman from the 1930s, and Outdoor Life, which began publication in 1897. Roosevelt’s quote on hunting wolves with dogs, at the beginning of chapter 8, is from “A Wolf Hunt in Oklahoma” (Scribner’s Magazine 38 (5): 513–32, 1905).

  Material on hunting wolves with eagles is from Remmler’s own account, “Reminiscences of My Life with Eagles” (Journal of the American Falconer’s Association 9, 1970), but I am indebted to Stephen Bodio, Harry Reynolds, and Alberto Palleroni for clarifications. The Tamworth incident is from Charles Edward Beals, Passaconaway in the White Mountains (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1916). The Saturday-afternoon wolf killing is distilled from Charles Harger, “Hunting Wolves by Automobile” (World Today 16: 429–32, April 1909). The O’Connor book is The Big Game Animals of North America (N.Y.: Outdoor Life/E. P. Dutton, 1961). See also his “Wolf” (Outdoor Life 127 (4): 72–75, 144–45, 148–49, April 1961). The aerial hunting incident quoted is from Russell Annabel, Hunting and Fishing in Alaska (N.Y.: Knopf, 1948). The James H. Bond book, From Out of the Yukon, was published by Binfords and Mort, Portland, Ore., in 1948.

  Research material listed in Stanley Young’s enormous bibliography in The Wolves of North America served as the basis for chapter 9. I also relied heavily on his The Wolf in North American History (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, 1946); on the many, diverse accounts and attitudes expressed in the indexed volumes of Thwaites’s Early American Travels, 1748–1846; and on several articles: W. Petersen, “Wolves in Iowa” (The Iowa Journal of History and Politics 38 (1): 50–93, 1940) and an updated, edited version by Petersen (The Palimpsest 41 (12): 517–64, December 1960); A. Bowman, “Wolves: Being Reminiscent of My Life on an Eastern Montana Ranch” (typed manuscript 591. B68, 1938, in collections of the Montana Historical Society, Helena); E. Curnow, “The History of the Eradication of the Wolf in Montana” (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Montana, Missoula, 1969); and G. D. Hendricks, “Western Wild Animals and Man” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1951).

  The quote from Dodge is from The Hunting Grounds of the Great West by Richard Irving Dodge (London: Chatto and Windus, 1878). Webber’s encounter with wolves is given full treatment in Romance of Sporting; or Wild Scenes and Wild Hunters, by C. W. Webber (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Co., 1854). The quote from Taylor is in Twenty Years on the Trap Line, by Joseph Henry Taylor (Bismarck, N.D.: 1891). The Pattie, Maximilian, and several other quotes are from volumes in Thwaites.

  The article on Caywood referred to is A. H. Carhart, “World Champion Wolfer” (Outdoor Life, 84 (3): 22–23, 74–75, 1939).

  Roger Caras tells the story of the Custer Wolf in The Custer Wolf. Biography of an American Renegade (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966). The story of the Currumpaw Wolf is from E. T. Seton, Wild Animals I Have Known (N.Y.: Scribners, 1926). Information on wolf control in Canada was kindly provided by Ron Nowak from his unpublished manuscript “The Gray Wolf in North America.”

  Commentaries by trappers I felt most important for my purposes were: A. R. Harding, Wolf and Coyote Trapping (Columbus, Ohio: A. R. Harding Pub. Co., 1909); Ben Corbin, Corbin’s Advice; or the Wolf Hunter’s Guide (Bismarck, N.D.: The Tribune Co., 1900, copy at North Dakota Historical Society, Bismarck); Bud Dalrymple, The Grey Wolf of South Dakota (Altoona, Pa.: Altoona Tribune Co., 1919, copy at Montana Historical Society, Helena); and L. Louck’s Successful System of Trapping Wolfkind (n.p., n.d., copy at Minnesota Historical Society, Minneapolis).

  IV: And a Wolf Shall Devour the Sun

  Source material for this section was by far the most diverse, ranging through mythology, literature, and history, and in the light of this my annotations here are even more restricted in comparison with those above.

  Francis Klingender alludes to the story of the Wolf of Gubbio in a seminal work for these chapters, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1971). The Florence McCulloch work referred to is her Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1960). The T. H. White book is The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts (N.Y.: G.P Putnam’s, 1954). See also Anne Clark, Beasts and Bawdy (N.Y.: Taplinger, 1975) and Joseph D. Clark, Beastly Folklore (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1968). Much of the anecdotal material for these chapters came from Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1911–15, 12 volumes, third ed.) and his Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law (London: Macmillan, 1918, 3 volumes); L. H. Gray, Mythology of All Races (Boston: Marshall Jones and Co., 1916–32, 13 volumes); Beryl
Rowland, Animals with Human Faces (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1973); Herbert Seager, Natural History in Shakespeare’s Time (London: E. Stock, 1896); Richard Eckels, Greek Wolf lore (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1937); and Thomas Jackson Peart, Animals and Animal Legends in English Medieval Art (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1955).

  The incident at the end of chapter 11 is recounted in full in C. E. Johnson, “A Note on the Habits of the Timber Wolf (Journal of Mammalogy 2: 11–15, 1921).

  For chapter 12, Montague Summers, The Werewolf (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1966), despite its bias, is requisite. Elliot O’Donnell, Werwolves (London: Methuen & Co., 1912) provides some balance. John A. MacCulloch’s article, “Lycanthropy,” in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (NY.: Scribners, 1908–1926, 8: 206–20) is a helpful synthesis. For a bibliography see George F. Black, A List of Works Relating to Lycanthropy (New York Public Library, 1920).

  The Richard Bernheimer work referred to is Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952). For more on William of Parlerne, see Kate Tibbals, “Elements of Magic in the Romance of William of Parlerne” (Modern Philology I (3): 355–71, January 1904). I relied on Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Baltimore: Penguin, 1955, 2 volumes) for the story of Lycaon. For two examples in modern popular literature stressing themes of sexual violence and spiritual malevolence as they apply to werewolves, see, respectively, The Werewolf of Paris, by Guy Endore (N.Y.: Farrar and Rinehart, 1933), and The Prey, by Robert Arthur Smith (N.Y.: Fawcett, 1977).

  The severely autistic children and conditions at the Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago are discussed in Bruno Bettelheim, “Feral Children and Autistic Children” (The American Journal of Sociology 64 (5): 455–67, March 1959). Jean Itard’s The Wild Boy of Aveyron (N.Y.: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962) details Itard’s association with Victor, and the opening chapters of Harlan Lane’s The Wild Boy of Aveyron (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) develop a remarkable picture of Victor’s life before he came to Itard. Also see Lucien Malson’s Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature (N.Y.: Monthly Review Press, 1972). For the paragraphs on Amala and Kamala I relied on Wolf Child and Human Child by Arnold Gesell (N.Y: Harper, 1941) and Wolf Children and Feral Man by J. A. L. Singh and R. M. Zingg (N.Y: Harper, 1942).

  The stories in chapter 13 are drawn from more than fifty collections. For Bewick, I used a reprint of the 1818 edition of The Fables of Aesop with Designs on Wood by Thomas Bewick (London: Paddington Press, 1975). For Reynard, I used an 1895 edition of The Most Delectable History of Reynard the Fox, Joseph Jacobs, ed. (N.Y: Schocken Books, 1967). Iona and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (N.Y: Oxford University Press, 1974), Thomas Noel’s Theories of the Fable in the Eighteenth Century (N.Y: Columbia University Press, 1975), and Early Children’s Books and Their Illustration, Gerald Gottlieb, ed. (N.Y: Pierpont Morgan Library/David R. Godine, 1975) are useful guides.

  Freud’s case is detailed in The Wolf-Man, Muriel Gardiner, ed. (N.Y: Basic Books, 1971).

  Notes on Jack London’s fascination with wolves are in Jon Yoder, “Jack London as Wolf Barleycorn” (Western American Literature 11 (2): 103–19, August 1976).

  For Götterdämmerung, I relied on Myths of Northern Lands by H. A. Guerber (N.Y.: American Book Company, 1895). The supernova in Lupus was photographed in 1976 for the first time and is discussed in “The Optical Remnant of the Lupus Supernova of 1006” by Sidney van den Bergh (The Astrophysical Journal, Letters, 208 (I), II: L17, August 15, 1976).

  Afterword

  For background on the Oregon wolf hearings, see, for example, “When Wolves Move In” (The [Portland] Oregonian, 10 November 2002) and “Bills Aim to Prevent Wolves’ Return” (The [Eugene] Register-Guard, 9 April 2003). The orientation packet prepared by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and distributed to attendees before each of its town hall meetings is “Town Hall” (Portland, Ore.: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, November 2002). A summary of those meetings is set forth in “Exhibit H: Summary of Wolf Town Hall Meetings” (Portland, Ore.: Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, 7 February 2003) and “Exhibit C: Wolf Alternatives and Update” (Newport, Ore.: Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, 20–21 March 2003).

  Information on the wolves that migrated into Oregon in 1999 and 2000 is in “Town Hall” and “Exhibit H: Summary of Wolf Town Hall Meetings,” above.

  The Idaho and Yellowstone reintroductions are summarized in E. E. Bangs and S. H. Fritts, “Reintroducing the gray wolf to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park” (Wildlife Society Bulletin 24:402–413, 1996) and E. E. Bangs, et al., “Status of Gray Wolf Restoration in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming (Wildlife Society Bulletin 26: 785–98, 1998). See also “The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho: Final Environmental Impact Statement” (Helena, Mont.: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1994) and C. M. Mack and J. Holyan, “Idaho Wolf Recovery Program: Restoration and Management of Gray Wolves in Central Idaho. Progress Report 2002” (Lapwai, Idaho: Nez Perce Tribe, Department of Wildlife Management, 2003).

  For a review of the taxonomy of the eastern timber wolf see P.J. Wilson, et al., “DNA Profiles of the Eastern Canadian Wolf and the Red Wolf Provide Evidence for a Common Evolutionary History Independent of the Gray Wolf (Canadian Journal of Zoology 78: 2156–66, 2000). For a reassessment of the effect of wolf predation on the population of prey species see R. D. Boertje, et al., “Predation of Moose and Caribou by Radio-Collared Grizzly Bears in East and Central Alaska” (Canadian Journal of Zoology 66: 2492–99, 1988) and two monographs by W. C. Gasaway, et al.: The Role of Predation in Limiting Moose at Low Densities in Alaska and Yukon and Implications for Conservation, Wildlife Monographs, no. 120 (Bethesda, Md.: The Wildlife Society, 1992) and Interrelationships of Wolves, Prey, and Man in Interior Alaska, Wildlife Monographs, no. 84 (Bethesda, Md.: The Wildlife Society, 1983).

  Baseline material for assessing the recovery of naturally occurring wolf populations in the contiguous United States is provided in B. Lopez, “Wolves in the Lower Forty-Eight” (Journal of the North American Wolf Society 2 (2): 10–17, 1976). For a summary of the red wolf reintroduction program, see M. K. Phillips, et al., “Restoration of the Red Wolf in L. D. Mech and L. Boitani, eds., Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). The wolf recovery program in Arizona and New Mexico is analyzed in P. C. Paquet, et al., “Mexican Wolf Recovery: Three-Year Program Review and Assessment” (Albuquerque, N.M.: prepared by the IUCN-SSC Conservation Breeding Specialist Group for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2001). See also M. K. Phillips, et al., “Living Alongside Canids: The Extermination and Recovery of Red and Gray Wolves in the Contiguous United States” in D. Macdonald and C. Sillero, eds., Canid Biology and Conservation (London: Oxford University Press, in press) and relevant papers in L. N. Carbyn, et al., eds., Ecology and Conservation of Wolves in a Changing World (Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1995).

  The federal plan for reestablishing the wolf in the northeastern United States is Recovery Plan for the Eastern Timber Wolf (Minneapolis and St. Paul: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1992). Also see J. Elder, ed., The Return of the Wolf: Reflections on the Future of Wolves in the Northeast (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England/Middlebury College Press, 2000).

  Growing public interest in encountering wild wolves, together with expanding wolf populations, has led to more frequent human-wolf contact, including some unprovoked attacks. See M. E. McNay, “Wolf-Human Interactions in Alaska and Canada: A Review of the Case History” (Wildlife Society Bulletin 30: 831–43, 2002) and supporting material in M. E. McNay, “A Case History of Wolf-Human Encounters in Alaska and Canada,” (Wildlife Technical Bulletin 13, Juneau, Ak.: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 2002).

  Robert O. Stephenson’s papers include “Nunamiut Eskimos, Wildlife Biologists, and Wolves” in F. H. Harring
ton and Paul C. Paquet, eds., Wolves of the World: Perspectives of Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Publications, 1982) and with B. Aghook, “The Eskimo Hunter’s View of Wolf Ecology and Behavior,” cited above in section I.

  For a recent overview of the history of human attitudes toward wolves, including the impact of such attitudes on current wolf management policies, see S. H. Fritts, et al., “Wolves and Humans” in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation. Also, see M. A. Nie, Beyond Wolves: The Politics of Wolf Recovery and Management (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and a series of papers about modern human perceptions of wild animals by S. Kellert, including, with M. Black, et al., “Human Culture and Large Carnivore Conservation in North America” (Conservation Biology 10: 977–90, 1996).

  INDEX

  Italicized numbers indicate illustrations. Numbers followed by an m indicate marginalia.

  A | B | C | D | E

  F | G | H | I | J

  K | L | M | N | O

  P | Q | R | S | T

  U | V | W | Y | Z

  aardwolf, 17

  Abyssinian wolf, 18

  Adams, James Capen, 175